Montreal Canadiens Should Have Made Bigger Push for Jack Eichel

Montreal Canadiens general manager Marc Bergevin said for years that it is difficult to acquire talented players to play centre.

Teams just don’t give up on or move high scoring centre ice men is what he claimed.

And then we fans sat and watched players like Ryan O’Reilly (twice), Elias Lindholm, Vincent Trocheck, Matt Duchene (three times?), Paul Stastny (twice), Tyler Seguin, Ryan Strome, Mika Zibanejad, Kevin Hayes, Nazem Kadri, and Pierre-Luc Dubois were all traded.

Bergevin did acquire Nick Suzuki when he was still in Junior and he has quickly developed into a star centre, but for many years he sat and watched as the Canadiens used David Desharnais as their most offensive centre while the team had the best goaltender of his generation winning Hart Trophy’s and Vezina’s.

Eventually, he did trade for Christian Dvorak as well, but that was only after the Jesperi Kotkaniemi draft pick blew up in his face.

All of this to say, we shouldn’t be surprised, but we should be upset that the Canadiens did not get more involved in the Jack Eichel trade discussion.

When rumours were swirling about a potential Eichel trade in the summer, the Buffalo Sabres were supposedly asking for five key pieces to a deal, including first round picks and great young players. It sounded like the Canadiens would have to part with Nick Suzuki, Alexander Romanov and their next two first round picks if they were going to have any chance of acquiring the Sabres star centre.

Eichel was finally traded this weekend to the Vegas Golden Knights. The fact he was dealt was no surprise, but the return, or lack thereof, was a bit shocking. The Sabres received Alex Tuch, Peyton Krebs, a first round pick in 2022 and a second round pick in 2023. The picks are also conditional. If the 2022 picks ends up being in the top ten, the Sabres get the Golden Knights first round pick in 2023 and second round pick in 2024 instead.

That’s it. That’s a decent package of player, prospect and pick, but the Golden Knights got one of the best players in the world in Eichel.

Tuch is a good player, a 25 year old winger with great speed and size. He scored 33 points in 55 games last season so he’s not an elite scoring winger but he adds good production from the middle six.

Krebs is a terrific prospect who was taken just two spots after Cole Caufield in the 2019 NHL Draft. He put up ridiculous numbers in Junior, had ten points in seven career AHL games, but struggled to score in nine NHL games this season.

Tuch and Krebs and pretty comparable to Josh Anderson and Cole Caufield. Were the Canadiens unwilling to part with Anderson, Caufield and a couple of picks to get in on the Eichel sweepstakes? Are they too worried to move their first round pick next year? Why? Because it might turn out to be a top six centre? Well, Eichel is one of the top six centres in the world so why hesitate?

The Canadiens haven’t had a 40 goal scorer since Vincent Damphousse in 1993-94. No one has scored 100 points for this team since Mats Naslund in 1985-86. No one has scored 90 points for the Canadiens since Pierre Turgeon and Damphousse both did in 1995-96.

Eichel has 40 goal and 90 point potential for next season, and the next handful after as well. The Canadiens have not had a star like him for decades. They had an opportunity to acquire him and didn’t get involved in the trade talks.

There are risks associated with acquiring Eichel. He is about to undergo a neck surgery that hasn’t been done on an NHL player before. However, it is not like Dr. Nick Riviera from Springfield USA is his surgeon. Eichel requires surgery much like dozens of NHL players have surgery every year. Not many of them forget how to play hockey after being operated on. In fact, he will probably be a lot better than the players who scored 18 points in 21 games last season.

He almost certainly would have been the best goal scorer we have seen in Montreal in since around the time they last won the Stanley Cup. It would have cost a lot, and there is some risk involved, but it was the right time for Bergevin to admit it is possible to acquire a star centre via trade and just pull the trigger.